I Am Broken
I Am Broken
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.
—Isaiah 61:1
His name was John. That much I remember without any effort, although close to twenty years have now passed. So much of memory remains captive to the fog of time. But John is someone I’ll never forget.
He sat across from my husband and me, both of us still in our twenties, new parents of a baby boy, and struggling. We’d driven the two hours to his ranch because he was a counselor. And he said he could help.
If anyone needed help, we did.
The details are private and painful, even these two decades later. But I can tell you this: in the short years of our marriage, I’d shrunk to a fraction of myself. Pain—unrelenting pain—does that to a person. Mine was a pain of the heart, of spending years praying for a marriage that could not be saved.
By the time I sat in front of John, I had no hope left. None. Years of effort had produced nothing but disappointment. I wielded anger like a shield, hiding my woundedness behind my hardness of heart.
John, bless him, did not pull away. He did not shrink from my searing cynicism, nor did he judge. Instead, he saw through the anger to the broken woman beneath. He pulled out his Bible and unfolded for me the words of Isaiah 61:
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners . . .
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the LORD
for the display of his splendor.
—VERSES 1–3
I’ll never forget John’s reading me those words. Beauty from ashes? Joy instead of mourning? I couldn’t fathom it. My pain ran too deep.
John wasn’t finished with me.
“God is not finished with you yet, Michele,” he told me. “Someday you will be an oak of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor. I know you can’t believe it right now, but I believe it enough for the both of us.”
John was right about two things that day.
One, I couldn’t believe it. Not that day. It seemed too good to be true, another dream that would disappear the moment I reached for it. So I didn’t reach for it. I couldn’t afford to.
As it turns out, it didn’t matter. Because John was right about one more thing: God did bind up my broken heart. He brought beauty from ashes, joy from mourning, praise from despair. It took time. Years. It took the hard work of healing, the help of a counselor, and intense seasons spent in the Bible, wrestling with my faith.
But somehow, as only the Sovereign Lord can do, God took this crushed woman and built her into an oak. Not a tower of perfection but a solid display of His ability to redeem even the most broken of people.
The Bible is full of examples of God’s ability to grow oaks of His righteousness from broken individuals:
- Rahab the prostitute, who showed great courage when she hid the Israelites in her home and believed in the purposes of their God.
- Ruth the young widow from a pagan nation, to whom God provided a second husband, and whose son was included in the genealogy of the Messiah.
- Esther the uncle-raised orphan child, who eventually became queen and saved God’s people from annihilation.
- Mary of Magdala, whose spirit once hid seven demons but was so radically changed by meeting Jesus that she followed Him even to His death and beyond.
Just as God bandaged and healed the lives of these women, God can bandage and heal our lives too. Regardless of the source of brokenness, He’s more than able to bring forth new life. I know it feels scary to risk hope. It would be easier to hide behind a shield of bitterness or isolation. Or maybe mask the fear with a smile and the appearance of near perfection. Allowing ourselves to believe again could crush us beyond repair.
If your hope is placed in a spouse or a friend or a job or a bank account or even yourself, that’s a real possibility.
But if your last scrap of hope is placed in the one with the power to bind up the broken, you will never be disappointed.
“He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor,” Jesus said (Luke 4:18).
Yes, you are broken, He says.
But your brokenness does not frighten Me. I will not shrink back. Because I’ve come for that very reason.
For you.
Be reassured: Where you are fragile, He can make you strong. Where you are wounded, He can make you whole. Entrust your pieces to His perfect hands, and watch His healing work begin. One day, you’ll wake up to discover—joy!—He’s turned your broken heart into Isaiah’s oak, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor.
He did it for me. And He’ll do it for you.
God does not ask you to give the perfect surrender in your strength, nor by the power of your will; God is willing to work in you. . . . And that is what we should seek for—to go on our faces before God, until our hearts learn to believe that the everlasting God Himself will come in to turn out what is wrong, to conquer what is evil, and to work what is well-pleasing in His blessed sight. God Himself will work it in you.
—ANDREW MURRAY, ABSOLUTE SURRENDER
Who Am I?
It is no accident that Jesus chose, as His first official sermon, in a Nazareth synagogue, the words of Isaiah 61. On the inauguration day of His ministry, Jesus chose to connect with those of us caught in brokenness, captivity, and darkness. Don’t skip over this too quickly, because His words carry significant implications for your value. Jesus could’ve called out the accomplished and devout and righteous. Instead, He reached for the broken. What does this mean to you?
From the book
